Huck Finn - Chap. 39-40

At the beginning of this chapter, I was starting to get really tired of Tom constantly making up new obstacles and difficulties for them and stalling Jim's freedom. I'm kind of surprised they actually went out and caught all of the snakes and rats and spiders. I'm also kind of glad they finally got a "lickin'" from Aunt Sally because they deserved it after setting rats and snakes loose in the house. If I was her, I wouldn't be able to sleep either with all of those nasty little creatures roaming around my house and crawling in my bed. Yuck. I shudder to even think about it.

I don't know how Jim could stand to sleep with all of the creatures crawling on him and biting him. I still think it's kind of funny, though, how he says he never wants to be a prisoner ever again in his life (because of how difficult Tom makes it because it has to be done "right").

That poor family. Tom and Huck had them so paranoid that Aunt Sally would jump if you touched her with a feather (as Huck put it). I guess I shouldn't be surprised that they pretty much called in the calvary (well, about 15 farmers) to help out with the supposed outlaw gang or whatever they were called that was going to come and steal Jim.

I feel that Huck is more mature than Tom because when he tells Tom about how there's a group of people in the house with guns, Tom says he could've got 200 of them in there. So I guess Tom and Huck's antics finally gave them some excitement as they were trying to free Jim. Lucky for Tom, Jim, and Huck, the dogs that the people came after them with were dogs that already knew them and just acknowledged them and ran past them to the noise of the "mob" that was after the little runaways. (Because having a pack of dogs after you would NOT be a good thing, for sure.)

I find it interesting that Tom made them run in a certain order when going out of the hole and going over the fence and such. He wanted Jim to go first, Huck to go second, and himself to go last. Why? Who knows...maybe he wanted the chase to be right on his own heels to make it more exciting.

I'm glad Huck finally stands up to Tom, with the help of Jim. This also kind of shows how Huck is more mature than Tom because Tom didn't want to get a doctor after being shot in the leg! Chances are, he was thinking that in his stupid books that he read, people didn't go to doctors after they'd been shot, but just bandaged themselves up. This kind of shows how he didn't quite understand how severe the situation was because he could've probably gotten lead poisioning from the bullet and died back in those days.

I must wonder: What are Aunt Sally and the family going to think when Huck and Tom go missing? I've been wondering this pretty much the whole time they've been planning to free Jim. Didn't they think about their own strange disappearance? But I suppose Tom's plan worked out because the family will probably think that the band of robbers or whatever kidnapped them.